@amywood20 You story is similar to my own. The symptoms and tender spots you've described are mine too. Did you have an injury that caused your spine problem? The reason this may be important is because if a whiplash caused your annular fissure at C5/C6, it may have also caused thoracic outlet syndrome which causes nerve and vessel compression at the junction of the neck and the shoulder. The problem is that TOS is poorly understood by many doctors unless you are in a place that can diagnose and treat it and I had been told I didn't have it because it's rare. TOS can be caused by a whiplash, a repetitive stress injury, poor slouching posture, physical build or a combination of those and what's rare about it is finding doctors who understand it. I've had problems in both shoulders, a SLAP tear in one, and a frozen shoulder caused in the other after a diagnostic MRI with an injection of gadolinium into the shoulder capsule. That was done because the shoulder was unstable, and the injection caused much bigger problems and I was in so much pain, it even hurt to breathe. I couldn't move my shoulder for 6 weeks, and then I had adhesive capsulitis and went through physical therapy for that. I had been diagnosed with TOS a few years earlier by a neurologist after carpal tunnel surgery didn't fix all of the issues. I told the orthopedic doctor this when he was diagnosing my shoulder instability and he didn't believe me until a Doppler ultrasound demonstrated that my circulation to my arms was cut off when I raised them or turned my head. I had a bulging disc too during this time which later down the road would rupture, grow bone spurs and all of that would compress my spinal cord making spine surgery necessary.

When you loose your lordotic curve in the cervical spine because of muscle spasms or posture, it also pulls into your shoulders and chest. When you slouch forward, your head and shoulders are forward and no longer aligned properly. All of that also pulls on your neck and the muscle spasms you have there.The tightness in the neck and chest can cause a twist and create a functional scoliosis of the thoracic spine. So if you stand sideways to a mirror, take a good look and see if your shoulder lines up under the center of your neck, or is it forward of your neck? Do your hands turn bluish, purplish and get cold? When you shoulder is pulled forward because of the tightness in the front of the chest, it causes the shoulder blades to move to the sizes and wing outward. Muscles connect your cervical spine to the shoulder blades and these often get tight and painful. The Pec minor muscle in the chest attaches into the arm pit in front and gets too tight and pulls the head of the Humerous forward causing it to slip it's position in the shoulder socket and causes a clunk or click. There can also be impingement at the top of the shoulder where movement can cause it to hit the Acromion process. The Pec minor tightness is one of the TOS impingement points. There is another where nerves exit the spine between scalene muscles on the side of the neck, and between the collarbone and rib cage.

I was in physical therapy working on my TOS when my disc ruptured, and over a couple years, bone spurs grew trying to stabilize the spine. I had all of the symptoms from everything all at once and in addition to that, the spinal cord compression was generating pain all over my body and spine surgeons told me that the pain in my legs was not coming from my cervical spine, and it was enough that they dismissed me instead of looking for a cause. I had a cervical epidural injection done as a diagnostic procedure that was probably supposed to demonstrate that the pain wasn't coming from my neck, but it had to opposite effect. The injection temporarily took away all the pre-existing pain I had, and the surgeon never discussed the results with me. All 5 of the surgeons who saw me missed the same thing and none of them believed that spinal cord compression in my neck could cause pain in my legs and body, but that was the source of my pain. I found medical literature with similar cases and I contacted a neurosurgeon at Mayo with that and he did surgery that fixed all that pain. Now that I have resolved the spine issues, the remaining issues are from thoracic outlet syndrome and I am still in therapy working on that.

It seems to me that you have symptoms that could be TOS. You mentioned that an epidural spinal injection didn't help, and it may be that isn't the source of the pain. You doctor may be repeating this if they don't know what is wrong. You may want to think about if that is worth the risks to repeat it. The steroid crystals will obscure the image on an MRI for about 6 weeks until it has been fully absorbed. I had an adverse reaction to my epidural injection that caused intense burning stabbing electric shock pain in my dominant hand that went on for weeks. Even a year later, I still had cold sensitivity in that hand. I refused to repeat the experience. It wouldn't solve my problem and I didn't want the risk. So ask yourself if you really want to repeat an epidural knowing that the first one didn't help. That might be telling you that the problem is somewhere else and your doctors haven't figured this out yet.

Coming to Mayo is a good choice. I had my spine surgery in Rochester. I was not limited to seeing only 2 doctors at Mayo. After the appointments with the neurologist, I was referred to a thoracic surgeon and testing lab for thoracic outlet and they did Doppler studies with tiny blood pressure cuffs on each of my fingers. They evaluated this to determine if my spine or my TOS was the bigger problem. That was before I met the neurosurgeon. I was told by one of the prior surgeons that shoulder blade pain is caused by C5/C6 disc issues. I think it is worth asking about TOS and spine issues while you are there. They have intake questions that asks for other issues you want to be seen for while you are there. TOS caused numbness and tingling, arm pain and weakness for me, and at one point tightness caused me to loose all sense of feeling in half of my lower arm. My physical therapist was able to resolve that. I didn't have radiculopathy or compression in the nerve roots where nerves exit the spine. You mentioned compression of nerve roots, and that that will follow the Dermatome map. Spinal cord compression does not follow a specific map of deficit because the entire big bundle is compressed. I did have muscle atrophy from cord compression in my shoulders and arms and lost about 50% of my muscle mass. A lot has come back since spine surgery.

Here are some links.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/thoracic-outlet-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20353988
https://trainingandrehabilitation.com/how-truly-treat-thoracic-outlet-syndrome/
https://sharing.mayoclinic.org/2019/01/09/using-the-art-of-medicine-to-overcome-fear-of-surgery/
Excerpts from "Cervical cord compression presenting with sciatica-like leg pain" from the European Spine Journal
http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3111492/reload=0
Physical therapy with Myofascial release that I do for TOS
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/myofascial-release-therapy-mfr-for-treating-compression-and-pain/